Genetic Variation in Preferences for Giving and Risk Taking

By David Cesarini, Christopher T. Dawes, Magnus Johannesson, P. Lichtenstein, Björn Wallace. 2009

498 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper, we use the classical twin design to provide estimates of genetic and environmental influences on experimentally elicited preferences for risk and giving. Using standard methods from behavior genetics, we find strong prima facie evidence that these preferences are broadly heritable and our estimates suggest that genetic differences explain approximately twenty percent of individual variation. The results thus shed light on an important source of individual variation in preferences, a source that has hitherto been largely neglected in the economics literature.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, General Decision Sciences, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cca67cc83ce3bd3805231ce5db68c23cd4831775

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Charles D. Sprenger

In General Decision Sciences

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

Chapter 21 - Household Finance: An Emerging Field∗ (2013, unknown): “Cesarini et al. (2009) estimate that about 30% of the individual variation in risk aversion elicited in experiments using hypothetical lotteries is due to genetic variation.”
Time to Change What to Sow: Risk Preferences and Technology Adoption Decisions of Cotton Farmers in China (2013, background): “(2008) and Cesarini et al. (2009) find a intergenerational correlation of risk attitudes.”
Twin Picks: Disentangling the Determinants of Risk-Taking in Household Portfolios (2013, unknown): “[28] Cesarini, David, Christopher Dawes, Magnus Johannesson, Paul Lichtenstein, and Björn Wallace, 2009a, Genetic variation in preferences for giving and risk-taking, Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (2), 809-842.”
Value versus growth investing: Why do different investors have different styles? (2015, unknown): “, Cesarini et al. (2009)) or involve measures such as the share in equities (e.”
Genetic Variation in Financial Decision Making (2010, unknown): “The estimates of heritability that we obtain match the laboratory evidence in Cesarini et al. (2009) very closely, and suggest that approximately 25% of individual variation in nancial risk-taking is due to genetic variation.”
Digit ratios (2D:4D) as predictors of risky decision making for both sexes (2011, result): “As another example, research on comparisons of behavior of identical and fraternal twins has revealed that genetics may explain a significant portion of the heterogeneity in preferences in a range of economic domains (see Wallace et al. 2007; Cesarini et al. 2008, 2009 ).”